Murcof The Alias Sessions 45rpm 3LP

Murcof, the primary project of producer Fernando Corona, returns to The Leaf Label for the first time in thirteen years with a mammoth and visionary double album, The Alias Sessions. This collection brings together all the elements incorporated into the project to date - meticulous sound design, ghostly samples, forceful beats, diaphanous atmosphere - but pushes the sound even further in terms of both abstraction and beauty. This is electronic music of exquisite tension and ecstatic release, moving from barely audible details to explosive peaks, much of it delivered by earth-moving bass.

The Alias Sessions is the most ambitious and wide-ranging Murcof album to date - less about the individual components of a track and more about the cumulative force of the set as a whole. Corona has composed several film scores and that experience with atmosphere informs these tracks. The record benefits from careful and focused attention, preferably over longer periods - it's too expressive and dynamic to remain in the background.

Corona began work on this music in April 2017, when he met with choreographer Guilherme Botelho, leader of Geneva-based dance company Alias, about a new performance piece - "Contre-Mondes." Versions of these compositions make up the first half of the album. Corona continued work with the organization for a 2018 performance entitled "Normal," which now forms the second part of the record.

"I'm always looking for new unheard sounds," Corona says. "To create weird associations and contrasts between sounds of a different nature." The Alias Sessions is the glorious result of this desire put into practice.